He laughed. ‘Well, no one’s perfect!’ Now he did remove his hand. ‘Go and see your Auntie Amy. I hope she’s well.’
Amywas in excellent form. Given where she had just come from and what her head was full of, Fran would have preferred it to have been one of her more sleepy days. She decided to give her progress report on the fireplace and broach the subject of the supper club.
‘We’re waiting for the sweep to give the chimney the all-clear,’ she said, after the weather, the state of the food in the care home and whether the local agricultural show would go ahead this year had all been discussed.
‘Sweep? Tig’s got brushes, he’ll sweep the chimney for you.’
‘Yes, he has, but I want to make sure the chimney’s safe before we use it. We need a man with a camera he can put up there, and check for cracks.’
Amy tutted. ‘People make such a fuss these days.’ By people she meant Fran.
‘It would be a shame if the house burnt down because there was a chimney fire,’ said Fran, rattled.
‘I’ve no idea why you felt you had to take the fireplace out in the first place. I paid good money for that fireplace, years ago,’ Amy grumbled. ‘Very economical on coal.’
‘Anyway, moving on from fireplaces, I’ve decided to have a supper club in the farm.’ Amy’s look gave Fran permission to continue. ‘It’s a fairly new idea. People come and eat dinner at your house – or rather supper – and they pay what they think it’s worth.’
‘Why?’demanded Amy.
‘Why would they pay? Because they’ve had a good meal, I hope.’
‘But why would you want to invite people for a meal and then expect them to pay? We never charged people in the old days.’
‘No, well, it is a very new concept’ – Fran felt that in Amy’s eyes anything that happened after the Second World War was new – ‘but I want to meet more local people and let them know about the cheese. And then I can sell it. I have a small stock of the various kinds in the fridge.’
‘Have you met many local people already?’
Fran could have sworn that Amy was a mind reader and knew what subjects Fran wanted to avoid. ‘Not that many. There’s Tig of course, and I’ve met his mother. I’ve got Issi, my friend staying at the moment.’ She was hoping Amy would express a desire to meet Issi, who was in town, scouring the charity shops for vintage pie dishes while Fran was visiting Amy.
‘Have you been obliged to have anything to do with the scoundrel next door?’
Fran wished she could lie but couldn’t because (a) she wasn’t good at it and (b) Amy would be able to tell instantly that she was lying.
‘Actually, Antony has been very helpful—’
‘Antony, is it? Christian-name terms! Don’t forget that any help he offers while he’s pretendingtobe neighbourly is only to make the property better for him when he fools you into selling it to him!’
‘Really, Amy—’
‘Mark my words! He’s up to something if he’s being helpful.’
As Fran hadn’t had a chance to tell Amy about the track or his generous offer to make a cheese room, she suspected Amy knew about the track at least. ‘He has been brilliant sending good people to repair the track,’ she said defiantly. ‘The milk tanker couldn’t always get up it, you know.’
‘It managed perfectly well in my day!’ said Amy.
Fran realised that Amy had probably forgotten her last months on the farm and how difficult they had been. ‘It’s nice to have a good track,’ said Fran.
‘Are you selling the milk to the co-op?’
Fran wondered who the mole was. Who knew she was making cheese with the milk and not selling it? She sighed. It could be lots of people. ‘No, I’m making cheese. I thought I’d told you.’ She knew she hadn’t told Amy that the co-op had practically sacked her and that she was living off her savings, more or less.
‘Then you don’t need a fancy new track!’
‘About the cheese,’ said Fran, feeling it was better to just ignore this remark, given that Amy seemed to have had chilli powder or some anger-producingadditivewith her breakfast. ‘I would like to make a Cheddar-type cheese. Will you tell me where the quarry is? Where you used to mature the cheese when you made it?’
‘No,’ said Amy. ‘If you’re so keen on cheese you can find it yourself. I didn’t leave you my farm so you could consort with the enemy and let him pay for you to have a new track.’
Amy seemed to be getting angrier and angrier with every word.
